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The Acquisition of Referring Expressions: A dialogical approach
Edited by Anne Salazar-Orvig, Geneviève de Weck, Rouba Hassan and Annie Rialland
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 28] 2021
► pp. 164–199

Chapter 6
Explorations in the relations between reference, syntactic constructions and prosody

ORCID logo | Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3
ORCID logo | Université de Neuchâtel
| Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3

Based on a cross-sectional corpus of 14 mother-child conversations (aged 2;2 to 2;4), this chapter explores children’s sensitivity to both formal linguistic features and discourse-pragmatic factors. We considered various issues. The first was the sensitivity of young children to discourse through a syntactic construction closely related to discourse and information structure, i.e., dislocations (see Lambrecht, 1994, for adults, and De Cat, 2007, for children). The second was the fact that the occurrence of a referring expression in a syntactic construction was due not only to discourse-pragmatic characteristics but also to the constraints imposed by the nature of certain verb frames. The third was young children’s sensitivity to discourse, examined through variation in the prosodic contours of referring expressions. Our results indicate that the children’s use of dislocation is sensitive to discourse-pragmatic contexts in a way comparable to that of the adults and that prosody varies with discourse-pragmatic characteristics. In addition, the nature of the verb frames studied was also shown to influence children’s choice of referring expressions.

Keywords: syntactic constructions, referential chain, dislocation, verb frame, prosody, formal factors, discourse-pragmatic factors
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Dislocations and reference
    • 1.2Verb frames and reference
    • 1.3Prosody and reference
    • 1.4Aim of the study
  • 2.Method and preliminary results
    • 2.1Participants and data collection
    • 2.2Coding
      • 2.2.1Categories of referring expressions
      • 2.2.2Verb frames
      • 2.2.3Position within the referential chain
      • 2.2.4Prosody
      • 2.2.5Complementary analysis
    • 2.3Intercoder agreement and statistics
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Referring expressions, position in the referential chain, and prosody
    • 3.2Dislocations
      • 3.2.1Ratio and dislocation direction across referring expressions
      • 3.2.2Dislocation and discourse-pragmatic characteristics
      • 3.2.3Dislocation, position in the referential chain and prosody
    • 3.3Verb frames
      • 3.3.1Distribution of referring expressions in verb frames
      • 3.3.2Distribution of referring expressions according to referential-chain position
      • 3.3.3Prosody in verb frames
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.28.06kle
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2021. Chapter 1. A dialogical approach to the acquisition and usage of referring expressions. In The Acquisition of Referring Expressions [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 28], ► pp. 2 ff. DOI logo
Yamaguchi, Naomi, Anne Salazar-Orvig, Marine Le Mené, Stéphanie Caët & Annie Rialland
2021. Chapter 2. Filler syllables as precursors of referring expressions. In The Acquisition of Referring Expressions [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 28], ► pp. 42 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Chapter 11. The acquisition of referring expressions: From formal factors to communicative experience. In The Acquisition of Referring Expressions [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 28], ► pp. 320 ff. DOI logo

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